Computer suddenly stopped working; no beeps or anything.

[JohnGafnea]

You know those beeps that computers make when first booting up? Mine no longer even makes that. I built this computer about 2 weeks ago for a Christmas present. Here's the specs:

Abit KX7-333
AMD Athlon XP 2100+
CoolerMaster Heat Pipe CPU cooler
TNT2 video card
SB Audigy sound card
1 stick of PC2100 DDR

I doubt if any of the rest is relevant. Anyways none of this overclocked or anything, and it's been working perfectly since the day I put it together. Today however my girl friend (the receipient of the gift) said it, upon being turned on, made "abnormal harsh beeps" and the monitor then said something to the effect of "check the VGA device" or something.

Now even when I start it, it makes none of those BIOS beeps, none at all. The motherboard lights the yellow and green light, and all the fans start, and it sounds identical to how it should, except of course none of the "beeps" and the screen never changes from the "check the VGA device" type message.

The most logical solution I could think of was to replace the video card, but for some reason I was under the impression that even without a VGA card, the computer would still make those initial beeps upon startup.

This is obviously very frustrating and would be much appreciative if anyone has had similar experiences and would share their advice. Thanks.

[SuperSparks]

Hi JohnGafnea, welcome to VirtualDr

Those beeps that you get during the POST are basically saying that all the hardware has been detected and all's well. The way it works, though is that the graphics card performs it's own POST first, and then hands over to the mobo BIOS, which then performs the main POST, where you hear the beeps. If, as you suspect, the graphics card has died, then it will never hand over to the mobo, and you get exactly the symptoms you describe. You should definitely try changing the graphics card.

[robosmasher]

I have the same problem, probably exactly.
I have :
Athlon XP2100
512MB DDR PC2700 RAM
Shuttle AK35GT2
Geforce3 Ti200

I understand the possibility of the video BIOS, but my video card works perfectly in my other machine, and my other machine's video card (Voodoo Banshee) does not work in my new machine. However the problem does seem to fix itself every once and a while.

[Limerick]

Hi JohnGafnea,

You may want to either remove the CMOS battery for a few minutes, or to clear the CMOS with a jumper. I've seen some mighty "weird" things be resolved by simply clearing the CMOS. It may be worth a shot in this case.

Limerick

[robosmasher]

Well, I don't know about John, but I have tried clearing the CMOS many times, sometimes it fixes it right there, and sometimes it fixes itself a while after clearing the CMOS
I'm thinking it could be the CMOS battery, but I'm not too knowledgeable about how a computer starts, so I'm not too sure if that could be the problem.

[steppenwolf]

im behind the times and i still have pentium two but i always thought when a computer boots up only one beep means everything is normal- one beep

it could be the board is grounded to case meaning the board may be touching metal where there is no hole to put a screw